Press "Enter" to skip to content

A Tax by Any Other Name

In today’s Journal (subscription):

Home builders have agreed to start paying Albuquerque Public Schools about $2,000 for every new home they build to help the district catch up on school construction.

An agreement between the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico and APS would require home builders to pay a fee on new homes, starting next year. The money would be used to build new schools or renovate old ones, APS facilities director Brad Winter said Monday.

The fee would start at $2,000 and increase to nearly $3,000 in the third year.

The agreement will be presented to the school board’s capital outlay committee today.

This is all well and good, but what this really means is that if you want to buy a new home in Albuquerque your cost is about to go up another $2,000 to $3,000. This has happened before. Those lovely impact fees required by the council drove home prices up about $10,000 across the board. So, basically in just a couple of years we have another $12,000 in one time property assessments – a tax no matter what you call it. I just don’t understand how city and state government can grow their budgets in the 50% range and still ask the people to pony up more.